There is a lot of new, exciting changes in store for Lei-Out and here is a little preview:

For those of you who have been attending Lei-Out the last few years, you know the tournament has grown to be gigantic since it started 17 years ago. It went from a small tournament to the second largest tournament in the world. We love the fact that it’s grown from an intimate tournament to a juggernaut because we can bring together more amazing frisbee players to play the sport we love… but the size of the tournament is not without its challenges.

That is why we are excited to announce we are moving Lei-Out from Santa Monica Beach a little further south to Huntington Beach!

Why? Santa Monica has been a good partner and host location when we were a small and mid-size tournament. But now that we are so large, we need a venue used to handling larger events and, most importantly, a location for us to have the biggest dance party in all of Ultimate history…ever!

Huntington Beach is used to big events, like the US Open of Surfing. And we really want to have one gigantic venue where all tournament participants can party together, like we used to do for Lei-Out when the tournament was smaller! So… now we can… in Huntington Beach!

Huntington Beach is just down the coast from Santa Monica and it’s more convenient for people flying into town (which is most tournament goers) because there are three airport options close by: LAX (Los Angeles), LGB (Long Beach) and SNA (Santa Ana/Orange County). Check out the travel page for more information.

Also Huntington Beach is one of the coolest beaches in California. Don’t take our word for it, just look:

We know that playing Ultimate is a big part of the weekend but we also know that partying with new and old friends is also part of the draw, so…to help facilitate the shenanigans, Lei-Out 2018 with have three parties: A Friday night welcome party; a Saturday night dance party; and a Sunday night closing ceremony and party!

There’s been a lot of chatter recently about Lei-Out. Registration has opened! It’s moving to Huntington Beach! It’s back on MLK weekend! And we are openly promoting a big, epic party!

We’d like to offer some additional information about the inner-workings of Lei-Out as we move towards the next chapter of our awesome event:

Involvement in the community: Do Lei-Out and its organizers support the ultimate community?

Absolutely! Lei-Out works closely with many of the most-involved members of the Los Angeles ultimate community. In fact, three members of the L.A. ultimate governing board (LAOUT) are helping organize Lei-Out. LAOUT supports and sponsors Lei-Out and vice versa. Lei-Out contributes to LAOUT financially as well.

The team of Lei-Out organizers serve the community in many capacities. Members of Lei-Out include the USAU Regional Coordinator and Sectional Coordinator, and we have a strong history of running tournaments including St. Pat’s Hat, Huck It Long Beach, San Francisco Revolution; in fact, one of the organizers is club regional TD this year; another is Vice President for the Utah Ultimate Disc Association and North West Development Director for USA Ultimate; and that is just part of the commitment to organizing and building the ultimate community here and beyond.

Lei-Out does a lot of philanthropy, though we do not believe you do charity to boast about doing charity or use it as a marketing ploy. We have always asked the organizations we financially support not to blast it out. Within the ultimate community, we donate to LAOUT and the cancer awareness organization E.R.I.C.; we’ve sent discs to groups in foreign countries, and funded local leagues.

Also, this year we are super excited to be working with E.R.I.C. to find fields and a stadium in HB to host a high-profile U20 women’s ultimate tournament the same week as Lei-Out.

Outside of our support for the ultimate community, Lei-Out contributes tens of thousands of dollars to non-profit groups in Southern California as a way of giving back for the amazing levels of support we get from the local community.

Party: What’s the deal with the Lei-Out party?

This year’s Lei-Out party is shaping up to be awesome in Huntington Beach with a space AT the beach that can hold everyone who attends the tournament! We are looking at having a cool DJ and even some surprise performers!

What has stopped a big party like that the last two years?

We love to dance! We love to party with our friends! We love to all be in the same place to do it so we see our long-lost ultimate friends from around the country! We want free and reasonably priced drinks! We don’t want to wait in line! We want to jump on, climb on, dance on, throw and play with everything around us! We’re ultimate players!

About 5 years ago we outgrew the largest restaurant/bar venue that could hold all the Lei-Out players. For two years, we were able to invest a ton of money to transform a vacant department store warehouse into a mega-party with lights, DJ and dancing. It was incredible!

Unfortunately for us, the warehouse venue was turned into a movie theater and the search was on for a new venue that could host 4,000 people, was ultimate-proofed (not a lot of things to break), could blast music until 2 a.m. and that the Santa Monica police and fire department would sign-off on. Oh, and we wanted it within walking distance from the hotels and fields, for safety purposes. Our solution was to tent the pier (which cost a fortune) and host an incredible party on the iconic Santa Monica structure. All those that were there will admit that for a while, it was truly epic. Unfortunately, a fire marshal decided to shut it down when it really got rocking. Mind you, the fire department, and a different fire marshal, signed off on the event and the permits weeks prior AND another fire marshal inspected the facility that morning and signed off on the set-up and its safety.

Since then we’ve had to scrap our plans for a re-vamped party twice. Once because other agencies within the city were concerned, so we sacrificed the party to save the tournament. And last year, the threat of rain caused us to go to plan B: Pub crawl.

We know people want more. We want more! We long for that ultimate ultimate dance party like a surfer longs for the perfect wave. And the move to Huntington Beach will allow us to realize that dream once again! We will transform a beach parking lot into a venue that can fit every player.

Bottom Line: Our move to Huntington Beach this year allows us to throw the coolest ultimate party perhaps ever! Actually, three parties: Friday, Saturday and Sunday. In a venue we are constructing on the beach parking lot! It does not get better than that.

Field Size: What’s the deal with the field size for Lei-Out?

We get two usual types of feedback about field size at Lei-Out:

1) The fields are too small!

2) The fields are too big!

We’ve found these opinions to be subjective based on:

a) How much you like to run ... on sand.

b) If you’re training for worlds … or training your liver for the world beer championships.

c) What your favorite form of grass ultimate is: Mini, goaltimate or full field.

The point here is that we are balancing many different desires and perspectives. Last year we hired an engineer to map out the fields in the most efficient layout, with multiple options. We also had a very long and robust discussion about what the size of the fields should actually be. We were divided on what we should do but ultimately decided to vary the sizes of field depending on team bracket levels.

Bottom line on fields for 2018: All fields will be regulation size. We’ve hired an engineer (fellow ultimate player) again to construct the field map and use templates to ensure consistency. We also have plans to line a large number of fields this year and are looking into constructing a stadium for the showcase field.

What’s up with tournament finances?

Is there a paid staff for Lei-Out? You bet! Do they work hard and deserve payment? You bet! We pay folks to do scheduling, map fields, registration, etc. It’s a modest amount commensurate with the amount of work done.

Do the organizers of Lei-Out really make 6 figures? Alas, no, we don’t. We wish! If we did, we would have already quit our day jobs; moved to Cabo; and bought a summer home in the south of France with a wine cellar the size of a Lei-Out field.

We run Lei-Out like a professional operation and spend money to do it right. For example, we pay local, state and federal taxes. Some think Lei-Out should get non-profit status to avoid taxes but we think that is wrong because, we all know, partying on a beach and playing ultimate should not get the same tax treatment as a charity. In fact, we pride ourselves on paying taxes that help mitigate the environmental impact we have; the impact on public transportation; the use of roads and highways; the airport, etc. We feel it is the right and honest thing to do.

On that same note, we pay for substantial levels of insurance. Most tournaments live on the edge. They either forego insurance and pray nothing bad happens, or get the bare minimum in order to check a box. With Lei-Out, we pay hefty insurance fees to make sure we’re covered in the worst case scenario to protect the tournament and our competitors, as well as the city and any of our vendors and partners.

What are the other costs?We pay significantly for public safety to be onsite as a condition of securing the beach permit; we pay fees to the city and several departments within the city to reserve the beach space and approve and monitor the event; we pay a webmaster to manage our website and registration system; we pay an engineer to design the field map and schematic to submit to the city; attorney fees for vetting all contracts with the city, third parties, vendors, etc; we pay a professional accounting firm; we pay for medics (three, on site, both days in three different locations for 2017); supplies to run the tournament; hotels for the tournament staff; tabs for the bar crawl, or, on the years we rented a venue or built a venue, we fronted all of the cost to do that; we spend money on volunteer appreciation parties; storage year round; a mail service and professional address all year round; we donate tens of thousands of dollars to nonprofits (as detailed above); and …

Does Lei-Out end up with money left over each year? Hopefully! Why? So that we have money to front costs so none of the organizers have to do so and so we can invest in the tournament next year and for years to come.

Some years, Lei-Out has lost money. In the years we expanded to include a huge party, where we bought out restaurants and venues, the tournament lost money. So, organizers helped front those costs because we viewed it as an investment in the growth of the tournament and the sport … that calculation was a good one as Lei-Out has grown to be the second-largest tournament in the world.

Having some reserves allows us to spend money to book or construct bigger party venues on years we needed to and it gives us the ability to move tournament venues this year.

We also like to invest in the future.Most tournaments spend all of the money they take in each year, and start the next year with zero in the bank. That leaves little room for investment in future years. In the early years of Lei-Out, a lot of money was fronted for a number of things to make the tournament world-class. Now, we maintain a reserve fund for all manner of contingencies, so that no unexpected cost or situation (like moving the tournament!) can stand in the way of Lei-Out’s continuity.

Why have fees increased this year?

We keep hearing that fees have increased the last few years... that’s news to us! We haven’t increased the fees for years, and in fact lowered them in 2017, and for 2018 they are the same despite the investment we are making moving to Huntington Beach and the new, super awesome party.

For context, the reason fees went up in 2016 was because the warehouse we used as a party venue was no longer available and we had to partially offset costs for constructing a party on the pier, and because there was uncertainty about what the costs would actually be to do something like that at the time. We lowered the fees last year once we had budget clarity.

Can Lei-Out provide water for all of the competitors?

This is certainly something we want to do at our new venue in Huntington Beach. Years ago, we invested in a custom water tank that we transported to the fields by frisbee central. This worked great for a few years, until the tournament grew to the extent that most fields were out of reach of the single tanker. Delivering water jugs across the beach to 378 teams was simply not feasible, especially since we are not allowed to operate a motorized vehicle on the beach. Luckily, there were enough water fountains spaced out along the beach to provide access to drinkable water. We communicated this to the team captains and encouraged teams to bring their own jugs to their fields if they didn’t want to make the trek.

We have previously considered providing bottled water to all the captains for the day during registration at frisbee central, but one of our concerns was the litter on the beach it would create. Santa Monica has a “Zero Waste” policy that we have to sign in order to get the permit and we did not want water bottle distribution to be viewed as a violation of that and thus hurt our ability to host the tournament in future years. That, and, we want to be good stewards of the environment, hence why we bought the water tanker in the first place. We could have bought more water tankers and more trucks but the layout of the beach parking lots and the tournament complicated matters.

With the new location in Huntington Beach, we have more options to provide easier accessibility to water because the parking lots are continuous and uninterrupted in the areas where we will have fields of play. A map is forthcoming.

What is motivating the move to Huntington Beach?

HB gives us the opportunity to do all the things we have been wanting to do at the tournament for years and have not been able to do in Santa Monica. The party is the first thing that comes to mind but we have some other cool surprises we are excited about too.

This year we actually reserved beach space in both Santa Monica and Huntington Beach but in our discussions and meetings with California, HB city, and beach officials, food and beverage providers, and the HB visitors bureau, we were really blown away by the level of support offered across the board and how excited everyone is about having Lei-Out in HB. We believe that will help make all the difference for the tournament.

It comes down to this:

We love the ultimate community. We have been active members of it for a long time. Our goal is to throw a kick-ass tournament that, because of its size and visibility, is a beacon for ultimate to be introduced to more people and grow the sport. With that growth has come growing pains. But we believe we’re opening a new and amazing chapter of Lei-Out with our move to Huntington Beach. We can’t wait for you to join us and be a part of the magic!